Was Mbalula’s sex scandal 'in the public interest'?

06 November 2011, 23:20

It is no denying that a lot has happened last weekend, and
many of that had everything to do with the media and how it does what it does.
Of course many of these reports were and still are worrying. Or at least to me
and a few like me.

I give credit to Media Matters’ Monday's
issue this past week which addressed quite important issues that got me thinking and asked
the right questions that need to be answered. And I hope this post will attempt
to just do that.

City Press newspaper alleged last week in its “exclusive” report
that sports minister Fikile Mbalula had unprotected sex twice with the
27-year-old model who requested anonymity but was however identified by Sunday
Independent, among other newspapers, as Joyce Omphemetse Molamu.

Molamu now
claims she is pregnant, carrying Mbalula’s child. Mbalula, on the other hand,
had as a result attempted to stop the newspaper from publishing the allegations
but “changed his mind”, so said City Press editor Ferial Haffajee on the
front-page on Sunday.

In his last
minute response to the allegations (not sure before or after the court
challenge failure) Mbalula claimed Molamu was a “known… extortionist in her
social circles”. He accused the newspaper of publishing “untested and baseless
allegations” and that such was “entirely unjustifiable”. Mbalula accused Molamu
of trying to extort money from him, adding that: “We have SMS messages that
demonstrate that she is telling lies and that she is using City Press to pursue
her interest to extort money from our client or to make money from City Press.”
He also added that publication of the allegations was “false and defamatory”,
saying this was not only unlawful but that it was in violation of the Press
Codes.

What was quite shocking about the whole saga was his wanting
the newspaper to “submit the woman to a medical examination in order to prove
the pregnancy allegation” which I personally thought was pathetic because that
is not the duty of the newspaper. If that is the case, this would mean all
newspapers and other broadcasting media would have to test and verify through whatever
means every allegation brought before them even before they could decide
whether to publish/broadcast or not, which would proved difficult to do, I
think. But what is clear is that the allegations were published as in “public
interest” because Mbalula had apparently preached safe sex last year during
World Aids Day in which he appealed to us youth to be faithful to our partners.
Another reason is that the allegations were seen as contradictory to ANCYL’s
“one boyfriend, one girlfriend” campaign, according to a Sunday Independent report.

It was only the allegations had been widely published that
Mbalula took it like a man, sort of, and apologised
for his promiscuity and infidelity (which gives the impression that they might
have been true to begin with. I mean, why apologise for something that’s never
happened?), saying he had “consulted with my family and provided them with
information and explanation for my acts and omissions in regard to the
allegations that are swirling in the media”. “I have apologised to my family,
particularly to my wife, as I should have known better. I have been trying to
deal with this matter, in a private manner, for the past three months and when
it became clear to me that this woman was prepared to extort money from me, I
then decided to cease all communication with her as I was not prepared to be
blackmailed”, he said, but added that Joyce’s pregnancy would “remain unproven
to me”.

It is worth noting that the incidents – where the two had
unprotected sex such that the minister even paid Joyce some money to do
abortion, which she later decided not to do – apparently took place at the time
when Mbalula was separated from his wife with whom he has a five-month-old
child.

Following this it is important to establish whether or not
such publication was actually and indeed in the public interest. And in doing
that, Pierre De Vos eloquently stated
that: “In a democracy it is appropriate that public figures are sometimes
treated differently than private citizens and that the former sometimes be
entitled to a lesser degree of privacy than the latter. In an open and
democratic society, voters have a right to be informed about all aspects of the
lives of our politicians that they believe are relevant to enable them to make
an informed decision about whether to support a particular politician or not.
The difficulty is that it will not always be apparent what information voters
would deem relevant.” De Vos further asked whether people’s (and even
politicians’ and leaders’) sexual orientation should ever be relevant. He asked
whether their “extra-marital dalliance” would be of any relevance in
undertaking their office duties.

According to De Vos – and as his general rule – information about
the private life of a politician “should not be deemed relevant and it should
be assumed that it would not be in the public interest for the media to publish
this kind of information about a politician. But this will change when these
private aspects of a politician’s life relate directly to the job description
of the politician or where the private conduct contradicts the publicly
expressed views and professed values of that politician.” For example, he said
when a politician campaigns against same-sex marriage and argues that marriage
is a “solemn religious pact between two people of opposite sexes (to the
exclusion of all others), the fact that the politician had an extra-marital
affair with somebody of the same sex or of the opposite sex, would obviously be
relevant and publishing such revelations would be in the public interest. But
if a politician belongs to a party like the ANC who supports gay rights, then
revelations about a politician’s sexual orientation should probably be deemed
irrelevant”.

He, however, warned that in some instances it this might be
quite “murky”, saying: “Personal characteristics of a politician like honesty,
integrity, diligence and fidelity may affect the manner in which that
politician does his or her job. Where the private actions of a Minister suggest
that he or she is not honest, is not capable of diligence and lacks integrity,
this might well have a potential impact on the manner in which that Minister
does his or her job. Thus, if a Minister has been convicted of theft or fraud
or is a known and un-rehabilitated alcoholic that would surely always be
relevant as it would probably have a very serious impact on the manner he or
she does the job the person was appointed to do.”

In its analysis
Media Matters indicated that Sunday World had excluded City Press’ angle that
the minister “was not preaching the gospel of faithfulness he preached to the
young” and that nowhere did the newspaper [Sunday World] mention Mbalula as
having used taxpayers’ money in his encounters with the woman nor the
“potential issue [of] parental responsibility and maintenance (which would have
made it a legal issue as opposed to just a moral one)”. It noted, as a result,
that an inclusion of these angels may have amounted to an invasion of Mbalula’s
privacy, and that the minister was of course “well within his rights to take
any publication that lacked the public interest side of the story to the Press
Council”. Besides the “in the public interest” defence, Media Matters asked
whether we should give a damn what the minister (and all other public
officials) gets up to and does with his private time.

And to decide whether Mbalula’s alleged affair publication
(my emphasis) provides an indication of how he will perform his official duties
as the sports minister will depend on each case which De Vos said
“getting [it] right will not always be easy as it requires one to make an
overall assessment, taking into account all relevant factors and then weighing
these up to decide whether the revelation of private information about a
politician is in the public interest or not”. But whatever allegations the
media decides to publication, it is important to guard against the danger of
publishing information about a person for no other reason than to satisfy the
prurient interests of the public in salacious information about the sex lives
of public figures, warned De Vos.

“But as a general rule, I think the private morality of a
politician has nothing to do with us voters and we should allow our politicians
to live their lives in private – no matter how messy these lives might be. But
the public morality of politicians requires that they are more or lest honest,
that they should not behave like rank hypocrites and that they should more or
less practice what they preach. If they fail to do so, it will say something
about their public morality and then their private lives should become fair
game for the media”, wrote
De Vos in January 29, 2009, following deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe’s
reported secret
affair which has since found to have been not true.

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